Brain Aerobics

Brain Aerobics, is there an anti-aging connection between aerobics and your brain?

This article was written by Sharon Begley, the author of "Change Your Brain, Change Your Mind," which is a wonderful book about the potential for our brains, and changing them for the better.

Her article is so clear, concise and articulate that I am really tempted to cut and paste it, but that is not a good idea in Google's eyes, so I will comment on it as we go. Please find a link at the bottom of the page.

Near the end of the article, Ms. Begley speaks to the mechanism involved, which I am grateful for, as it gives me confidence in the efficacy of the research.

When the author talks molecules of IGF crossing the blood brain barrier, I am more confident that what we are seeing is research, not commentary or advertising.

"The key to keeping intellectually sharp as we age may not be
mental gymnastics, as commonly recommended, but real
gymnastics.
According to a new study, the brain's long, slow decline may
not be inevitable. For the first time, scientists have found
something that not only halts the brain shrinkage that starts in a
person's 40s, especially in regions responsible for memory and
higher cognition, but actually reverses it: aerobic exercise, hence the title of the article; brain aerobics.

As
little as three hours a week of brisk walking -- no Stairmaster
required -- apparently increases blood flow to the brain and
triggers biochemical changes that increase production of new
brain neurons.
As brains age, normal wear and tear starting in middle age
causes them to process information more slowly, which means
it takes longer to make judgments and grasp complex
information.

Older brains also take longer to switch from one
task to another and are less adept at "multitasking" (such as
driving while simultaneously tuning the radio and checking the
tailgater)."

Brain Aerobics Means Deep Breathing?

Brain Aerobics

"The search for ways to slow down mental decline and
detrimental brain changes that come with age has taken an
unexpected turn lately.

Popular wisdom, as well as some
scientists, had long held that the way to stay mentally sharp was
to do mental gymnastics.

Crossword puzzles, reading, taking up
a musical instrument and generally challenging the mind were
supposed to stave off the mental ravages of old age.

That has been hard to prove. But support for the brain benefits
of physical exercise has become stronger. A number of earlier
studies showed that elderly people who take up aerobic exercise
show improved cognitive function after a few months, says
Arthur Kramer of the University of Illinois, Urbana:

Their
working memory is better, they are nimbler at switching
between mental tasks, and they can screen out distractions
better than people who did not get exercise training.

Now he and colleagues have discovered what may be the basis
for these improvements. As little as three hours a week of (brain) aerobic exercise increased the brain's volume of gray matter
(actual neurons) and white matter (connections between
neurons), they report in the November issue of the Journal of
Gerontology: Medical Sciences. "After only three months," says
Prof. Kramer, "the people who exercised had the brain volumes
of people three years younger."

Until 1998, neuro-dogma held that old brains do not grow new
neurons. A study on patients in Sweden overturned that
assumption. But researchers did not know whether people could
do anything to boost this "neurogenesis," or even whether doing
so would have cognitive benefits.

The Illinois study is therefore
the first to discover that older brains can indeed rev up their
production of new neurons (no one has studied whether
younger brains can), and it is apparently enough to make a real world
difference. Studies in both people and animals have
linked increases in brain volume (which occur with some drugs)
to improvements in thinking, remembering, cognitive flexibility
(thinking outside the box) and perseveration (not getting stuck
on one thought).
"This is a great emerging story," says Fred Gage of the Salk
Institute, La Jolla, Calif., who was not involved in the Urbana
study but led the 1998 discovery of human neurogenesis. "You
can do something to influence your mental fate as you get
older."
The Urbana scientists had 59 adults, age 60 to 79, get aerobics
training, non-aerobic stretching-and-toning training, or nothing.

The first two groups exercised for one hour three times a week,
walking around a gym at a little more than three miles an hour.
The researchers used MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) before
and after the program to measure the volunteers' brains.
Neither the stretchers-and-toners nor the couch potatoes showed any brain changes. But "the
aerobic group showed a substantial increase in brain volume," says Dr. Kramer.
Gray matter increased most in the frontal lobes, the seat of high-order thinking such as
attention and memory. White matter increased most in the corpus callosum. This is the bundle
of neurons that connects the right brain and the left, and whose deterioration with age is
thought to be responsible for slower thinking. With better connections, the hemisphere that is
carrying out some task can send signals to the other side to pipe down, making for better
cognitive efficiency.
"This is the first time anyone
has shown that exercise
increases brain volume in the
elderly," says Dr. Kramer. "It
suggests that aerobic exercise
can stave off neural decline,
and even roll back some
normal age-related
deterioration of brain
structure."

Because the volunteers were
all healthy, the study does not address whether exercise might slow down, let alone reverse,
age-related brain diseases such as Alzheimer's. And because the scientists did not put their
volunteers through a tougher regimen, they cannot say whether more strenuous exercise would
boost neurogenesis even further, or whether the benefits top out at some point.
Although the study included relatively few people, scientists not involved in it say it fits with a
growing body of evidence about the aging brain. "Different people from different labs are
finding the same thing: evidence of an increase in cognitive capacity with exercise," says Salk's
Prof. Gage.
Animal studies confirm the connection between moving your body and pumping up your brain.
When lab mice get a lot of exercise, such as in a running wheel, the connections among
neurons grow longer and more numerous. And in a harbinger of the Urbana results, says Prof.
Gage, neurogenesis occurs in the bewhiskered runners' brains. "Even in mice who don't start
exercising until they're elderly, exercise doesn't merely prevent decline in neurogenesis, but
reverses it," he says. "There is activation of neural stem cells, which suggests that these cells
are always there but become dormant with age." Exercise wakes them up, and they start giving
birth to neurons that improve the mice's thinking and memory.
How might exercise work this magic? Studies in lab animals show that exercise raises blood
levels of a molecule called IGF-1 (for insulin-like growth factor). Normally, IGF-1 does not
cross the blood-brain barrier, explains Prof. Gage, but "with exercise it does." IGF-1 increases
blood flow, which is good for brain neurons. Even more important, it induces neural stem cells
to morph into actual neurons and other functional brain cells. The hippocampus, a structure that
is crucial to forming new memories, is especially amenable to the benefits of IGF-1.
With more gray matter and white matter, "the brain is more interconnected, more plastic and
more adaptive to change," Prof. Kramer says.
Kramer's work and Begley's article follow with what another source, Simon Evans, Ph.D. and Paul Burghardt, Ph.D, report in their e-book called
Brainfit for Life report, and what I experience. from regular brain aerobics exercise.

Although I am hardly an unbiased source, I notice a qualitative change in my ability to focus and generate ideas when I do not exercise.

My workouts over the years have always been of the hot sweaty variety, which I still enjoy at 69, but I am learning that even 10 minute workouts following the HIIT formula, or High Intensity Interval Training can leave me with all the IGF crossing the blood brain barrier that I want, but I do not need special clothes, tools, a personal trainer, a gym, or fancy equipment.

Brain Aerobics of the Software Kind

Not only have I enjoyed physical exercise, but I have put my brain to the task using software like the Lumosity Program, the Posit Science Brain Fitness Program, and Mind Sparke Brain Fitness Pro.

It is possible to enhance the neurogenesis that Sharon Begley speaks of above by giving your brain novel challenge, so a combination of software and hardware workouts is very helpful to the older brain. I would say somewhat worn, but my wife delights in making that observation for me, so I will leave it to her.

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